Tigers Led MLB in Extreme Scoring Games

You may be asking yourself how a team with so much talent and grit found itself sunk before June.

That’s a fair question, and outside of bullpen issues and a lack of clutch hitting, I don’t have much of an answer.

However, I do have another stat found in the wild on social media, courtesy of our good friends over at Tigers Data, that should continue to perplex you and everyone else trying to figure out how and why the Tigers just couldn’t win games.

Let’s talk about extreme scoring.

This takes both sides of the scoring spectrum into account: games where the Tigers scored two or fewer runs and games where they scored eight or more.

The Tigers led MLB with 88 extreme-scoring games this season.

And I know what you’re thinking: “The offense was so bad that we must have had a ton of games with two or fewer runs, and that’s why this number is so high.”

And, yeah, you’re pretty much correct.

The Tigers scored two or fewer runs 57 times this season. In those games, Detroit went 6-51.

That’s far too many games where the offense simply could not put runs on the board. In 35% of their games this season, the Tigers failed to score at least three runs, and they paid the price for it.

But then came the other side of the extreme.

In the 31 games where the Tigers scored eight or more runs, Detroit went 29-2.

We all remember those two losses, but the 29 wins serve as a pretty simple reminder of what this team looked like when the offense was clicking. Score eight runs, and you’re probably going to win the baseball game.

Overall, the Tigers went 35-53 in extreme-scoring games.

Their 88 such games ranked first in MLB, with the Tigers playing an extreme-scoring game in 54% of their 162 games.

There was simply no middle ground.

Tiger fans know this all too well. The Tigers either couldn’t score and looked putrid offensively, or they scored a boatload of runs and looked like one of the most dominant teams in baseball.

That’s not a recipe for consistency.

It was a rough year, but now the question shifts away from what went wrong in 2026 and toward how Detroit can prevent the same thing from happening in 2027.

How do the Tigers avoid so many games on the bottom end of this scoring spectrum?

Does that simply mean continuing to develop the young players already in the clubhouse, or does Detroit need to look to free agency for another legitimate bat?

The Tigers’ 57 games with two runs or fewer tied for the fourth-most in MLB, and that should make one thing abundantly clear: hitting needs to be addressed.

If the Tigers are ready to move on from Gleyber Torres, the need for additional offensive production becomes even more important.

Still, that’s something we haven’t seen GM Scott Harris aggressively pull the trigger on. Despite the offensive struggles, Harris has consistently leaned toward the youth movement that infiltrated the Tigers’ clubhouse this season.

That philosophy will likely remain in place heading into 2027.

But if Detroit wants to turn those extreme scoring games into something closer to consistency, the offense has to be the place where the biggest questions are answered.